plans for Feisty

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Nov 5, 2006, at 7:53 AM, Matthew Copple wrote:
>
> On Saturday 04 November 2006 09:44, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> ...
>> Including screenshots in help is a bad idea, unless they are shrunken
>> and/or otherwise altered so that people don't confuse them with the
>> interface itself.
>
> It depends on the medium.
>
> In terms of the "books" that now comprise the offline documentation,
> screenshots are a must. The computer screen is a visual medium, and 
> reading text-only displays on an LCD or CRT is physically tiring, not 
> to mention rather bad for the eyes. One reason e-books have not made 
> print obsolete is the fact that we still have not figured out how to 
> make them kind enough to the visual cortex to allow for reasonably 
> lengthy reading sessions.

That says nothing about whether help should use screenshots. But it 
does mean that on-screen help shouldn't consist of "books", and we 
should certainly work towards splitting up any remaining long sections 
into standalone pages of only three or four paragraphs.

> Most readers do not find straight text to be a friendly learning 
> medium. That is why newspapers and magazines have introduced spot 
> color and visuals such as graphs and color pictures, and why graphic 
> designers rule the web.

And that's fine, because nobody confuses newspapers and magazines with 
real software. As for Web pages, if using full-size screenshots in 
those wasn't a problem, Web advertisers wouldn't so often use up 
valuable vertical space in their ad banners in trying to make them look 
like Windows error messages.

> For small, one- or two-paragraph blurbs (for example, a help topic on 
> the function of a particular menu option in a toolbar), I agree that 
> screenshots can get in the way. But when describing a particular task 
> (adding an e-mail account or setting up a new hard drive partition), 
> they are absolutely vital.
> ...

Neither Evolution 2.8, nor Apple Mail 1.3, nor (I am reliably informed) 
Outlook Express 2003, contain any screenshots in their respective help 
pages that describe how to set up an e-mail account. (Thunderbird 1.5 
doesn't have any installed help.) Granted, Evolution's help on this 
topic is very poor, but a screenshot of the relevant window wouldn't 
even *fit* inside a help page, without the kind of shrinking I was 
suggesting in the first place. :-)

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/